Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 27

But it is very pleasant to me to find that I have succeeded in what I tried to do. I gave the lectures years ago to show what I thought was the right way to lead young people to the study of nature--but n.o.body would follow suit--so now I have tried what the book will do.

Your step-son is a boy of sense, and I hope he may be taken as a type of the British public!

[A good deal of time was taken up in the first half of the year by the Scottish Universities Commission, which necessitated his attendance in Edinburgh the last week in February, the first week in April, and the last week in July. He had hoped to finish off the necessary business at the first of these meetings, but no sooner had he arrived in Edinburgh, after a pleasant journey down with J.A. Froude, than he learned that] "the chief witness we were to have examined to-day, and whose due evisceration was one of the objects of my coming, has telegraphed to say he can't be here." [Owing to this and to the enforced absence of the judges on the Commission from some of the sittings, it was found necessary to have additional meetings at Easter, much to his disgust. He writes:--]

I am sorry to say I shall have to come here again in Easter week. It is the only time the Lord President is free from his courts, and although we all howled privately, there was no help for it. Whether we finish then or not will depend on the decision of the Government, as to our taking up the case of you troublesome women, who want admission into the University (very rightly too I think). If we have to go into this question it will involve the taking of new evidence and no end of bother. I find my colleagues very reasonable, and I hope some good may be done, that is the only consolation.

I went out with Blackie last evening to dine with the Skeltons, at a pretty place called the Hermitage, about three miles from here...Blackie and I walked home with snow on the ground and a sharp frost. I told you it would turn cold as soon as I got here, but I am none the worse.

[It was just the same in April:--]

It is quite cold here as usual, and there was ice on the ponds we pa.s.sed this morning...I am much better lodged than I was last time, for the same thanks to John Bruce, but I do believe that the Edinburgh houses are the coldest in the universe. In spite of a good breakfast and a good fire, the half of me that is writing to you is as cold as charity.

April 4.

We toil at the Commission every day, and don't make any rapid progress. An awful fear creeps over me that we shall not finish this bout.

[While he was in Edinburgh for the third time, his attention was called to an article in the "Echo," the organ of the anti-vivisection party. He writes:--]

The "Echo" is pretty. It is one of a long series of articles from the same hand, but I don't think they hurt anybody and they evidently please the writer. For some reason or other they have not attacked me yet, but I suppose my turn will come.

[Again:--]

Thank you for sending me John Bright's speeches. They are very good, but hardly up to his old mark of eloquence. Some parts are very touching.

[His health was improving, as he notes with satisfaction:--]

Every day this week we have had about four hours of the Commission, and I have dined out four days out of the six. But I'm no the waur, and the late dinners have not been visited by fits of morning blue devils. So I am in hopes that I am getting back to the normal state that Clark prophesied for me.

4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., April 29, 1877.

My dear Skelton,

Best thanks for your second edition. You paint the system (i.e. of Scotch education.) in such favourable colours, that I am thinking of taking advantage of it for my horde of "young barbarians." I am sure Scotch air would be of service to them--and in after-life they might have the inestimable advantage of a quasi-Scotch nationality--that greatest of all practical advantages in Britain.

We are to sit again in the end of July when Mrs. Skelton and you, if you are wise, will be making holiday.

Your invitation is most tempting, and if I had no work to do I should jump at it.

But alas! I shall have a deal of work, and I must go to my Patmos in George Street. Ingrained laziness is the bane of my existence; and you don't suppose that with the sun s.h.i.+ning down into your bosky dell, and Mrs. Skelton radiant, and Froude and yourself nicotiant, I am such a Philistine as to do a stroke of work?

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[From Edinburgh he went to St. Andrews to make arrangements for his elder son to go to the University there as a student the following winter. Then he paid a visit to Sir W. Armstrong in Northumberland, afterwards spending a month at Whitby. His holiday work consisted in a great part of the article on "Evolution" for the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," which is noted as finished on October 24, though not published till the next year.

In November the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon Charles Darwin at Cambridge,] "a great step for Cambridge, though it may not seem much in itself," [he writes to Dohrn, November 21. In the evening after the public ceremony there was a dinner of the Philosophical Club, at which he spoke in praise of Darwin's services to science.

Darwin himself was unable to be present, but received an enthusiastic account of the proceedings from his son, and wrote to thank Huxley, who replied:--]

4 Marlborough Place, November 21, 1877.

My dear Darwin,

Nothing ever gave me greater pleasure than the using the chance of speaking my mind about you and your work which was afforded me at the dinner the other night. I said not a word beyond what I believe to be strictly accurate; and, please Sir, I didn't sneer at anybody. There was only a little touch of the whip at starting, and it was so tied round with ribbons that it took them some time to find out where the flick had hit.

T.H. Huxley.

[He writes to his wife:--]

I will see if I can recollect the speech. I made a few notes sitting in Dewar's room before the dinner. But as usual I did not say some things I meant to say and said others that came up on the spur of the moment.

[And again:--]

Please I didn't say that Reaumur was the other greatest scientific man since Aristotle. But I said that in a certain character of his work he was the biggest man between Aristotle and Darwin. I really must write out an "authorised version" of my speech. I hear the Latin oration is to be in "Nature" this week, and Lockyer wanted me to give him the heads of my speech, but I did not think it would be proper to do so, and refused. I have written out my speech as well as I can recollect it. I do not mind any friend seeing it, but you must not let it get about as the dinner was a private one.

[The notes of his speech run as follows:--]

Mr. President,

I rise with pleasure and with alacrity to respond to the toast which you have just proposed, and I may say that I consider one of the greatest honours which have befallen me, to be called upon to represent my distinguished friend Mr. Darwin upon this occasion. I say to represent Mr. Darwin, for I cannot hope to personate him, or to say all that would be dictated by a mind conspicuous for its powerful humility and strong gentleness.

Mr. Darwin's work had fully earned the distinction you have to-day conferred upon him four-and-twenty years ago; but I doubt not that he would have found in that circ.u.mstance an exemplification of the wise foresight of his revered intellectual mother. Instead of offering her honours when they ran a chance of being crushed beneath the acc.u.mulated marks of approbation of the whole civilised world, the University has waited until the trophy was finished, and has crowned the edifice with the delicate wreath of academic appreciation.

This is what I suppose Mr. Darwin might have said had he been happily able to occupy my place. Let me now speak in my own person and in obedience to your suggestion, let me state as briefly as possible what appear to me to be Mr. Darwin's distinctive merits.

From the time of Aristotle to the present day I know of but one man who has shown himself Mr. Darwin's equal in one field of research--and that is Reaumur. In the breadth of range of Mr. Darwin's investigations upon the ways and works of animals and plants, in the minute patient accuracy of his observations, and in the philosophical ideas which have guided them, I know of no one who is to be placed in the same rank with him except Reaumur.

Secondly, looking back through the same long period of scientific history, I know of but one man, Lyonnet, who not being from his youth a trained anatomist, has published such an admirable minute anatomical research as is contained in Mr. Darwin's work on the Cirripedes.

Thirdly, in that region which lies between Geology and Biology, and is occupied by the problem of the influence of life on the structure of the globe, no one, so far as I know, has done a more brilliant and far-reaching piece of work than the famous book upon Coral Reefs.

I add to these as incidental trifles the numerous papers on Geology, and that most delightful of popular scientific books, the "Journal of a Naturalist," and I think I have made out my case for the justification of to-day's proceedings.

But I have omitted something. There is the "Origin of Species," and all that has followed it from the same marvellously fertile brain.

Most people know Mr. Darwin only as the author of this work, and of the form of evolutional doctrine which it advocates. I desire to say nothing about that doctrine. My friend Dr. Humphry has said that the University has by to-day's proceedings committed itself to the doctrine of evolution. I can only say "I am very glad to hear it." But whether that doctrine be true or whether it be false, I wish to express the deliberate opinion, that from Aristotle's great summary of the Biological knowledge of his time down to the present day, there is nothing comparable to the "Origin of Species," as a connected survey of the phenomena of life permeated and vivified by a central idea. In remote ages the historian of science will dwell upon it as the starting-point of the Biology of his present and our future.

My friend Dr. Humphry has adverted to somebody about whom I know nothing, who says that the exact and critical studies pursued in this University are ill-calculated to preserve a high tone of mind.

I presume that this saying must proceed from some one wholly unacquainted with Cambridge. Whoever he may be, I beg him, if he can, to make the acquaintance of Charles Darwin.

In Mr. Darwin's name I beg leave to thank you for the honour you have done him.

[It happened that the quadrennial election of a Lord Rector at St.

Andrews University fell in this year, and on behalf of a number of students, Huxley received a telegram from his son, now newly entered at St. Andrews, asking him to stand. He writes to his wife:--]

That boy of yours has just sent me a telegram, which I enclose. I sent back message to say that as a Commissioner on the Scotch Universities I could not possibly stand. The c.o.c.kerel is beginning to crow early. I do believe that to please the boy I should have a.s.sented to it if it had not been for the Royal Commission.